“Saracen,” replied the Christian warrior, “the love which a true knight binds on one only, fair and faithful, is the gem entire; the affection thou flingest among thy enslaved wives, and half-wedded slaves, is worthless, comparatively, as the sparkling shivers of the broken diamond.” We find both soldiers courteous in conversation, and their example teaches a good lesson to modern controversy; but the “courtesy of the Christian seemed to flow rather from a good natured sense of what was due to others; that of the Moslem, from a high feeling of what was to be expected from himself. The manners of the Eastern warrior were grave, graceful and decorous;” he might have been compared to “his sheeny and crescent-shaped saber, with its narrow and light, but bright and keen, Damascus blade, contrasted with the long and ponderous Gothic war-sword which was flung unbuckled on the same sod.” They pursue their march to the grotto of the Hermit of Engaddi; a man respected alike by Christian and Mohammedan; revered by the Latins for his austere devotion, and by the Arabs on account of his symptoms of insanity, which they ascribed to inspiration. The hermit, once a crusader, was the man whom Kenneth was to meet. He delivers his message; but at night, while the Saracen slept, Kenneth is conducted to a subterraneous, but elegantly carved chapel, where he meets by chance with the noble sister of King Richard, who with Richard’s newly wedded wife, had come hither to pray for the king’s recovery. She drops a rose at the knight’s feet confirming the approbation which her smiles had already expressed to him in camp, and the story of true love, not destined to run smoothly, is fairly commenced. But as with “Count Robert of Paris,” “The Talisman” is not so much a romance as a picture of the strife and jealousy of haughty and rival leaders. Its value, as a historical novel, lies in the portrayal of these discordant elements.